Workshop on Middleware and Applications for the Internet of Things
(co-located with the 2017 Middleware conference in Las Vegas, USA)

M4IoT 2017 has ended. Thank you to all participants that made the event so valuable and successful!

You can (re-) watch the Keynote on "The Blockchain: What It is and Why It Matters for Us" by Douglas Schmidt here (download the slides here).

Welcome

The Internet of Things (IoT) is creating new services and applications across various domains, including smart grids, intelligent transportation, healthcare, smart homes, and energy management. As a consequence, a complex ecosystem of interconnected applications, services, as well as physical and virtual devices emerges. In this ecosystem, enabled by corresponding middleware, devices share contextual data or receive control commands; services consume, process, and/or provide data; and applications leverage services and devices to fulfill users’ needs. This workshop focuses on two fundamental components in such ecosystems: the middleware that enables composition of applications, services, and devices; and the applications built on top of such middleware. Central topics of interest include the architecture of these components, how they process data, how they communicate with one another, and the process of how they are designed, implemented, and operated.

Monday, December 11th 2017

8:30 - Introduction M4IoT and keynote by Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt (Vanderbilt University)
Topic: The Blockchain: What It is and Why It Matters for UsAbstract: Since the inception of Bitcoin technology, its underlying data
structure--the blockchain--has garnered much attention due its key
properties, such as decentralization, transparency, and immutability.
These properties make blockchains suitable for decentralized apps
(DApps) that require trustless exchange, consistent and incorruptible
transaction records, as well as enables operational use cases beyond
cryptocurrencies. For example, blockchain has the potential to
address interoperability challenges in a number of domains--including
IoT domains--such as delivering patient data securely to healthcare
organizations and devices, improving the overall efficiency of energy
transactions in electrical power distribution systems, and enabling
effective interactions between commuters and transit apps in smart
cities. Despite the interest in using blockchain technology for
interoperability, however, little information is available on the
concrete architectural styles and recommendations for designing
middleware in support of blockchain-based DApps for IoT systems. This
talk discusses key concepts in blockchains and important design,
privacy, and security considerations when considering using their use
in practice.

10:00 - Coffee Break

10:30 - Session: Middleware and Applications for the Internet of Things

13:30 - Introduction MECC and Keynote by Prof. Paulo Ferreira (INESC-ID, IST)
Topic: Live Migration and Garbage Collection for Big Data Java ApplicationsAbstract: The need to process large amounts of data, Big Data, is a
reality, and ranges from scientific experiments to social networks.
Big Data means processing and storing massive amounts of data in a
efficient way, possibly on the cloud or on cloudlets. With easy and
fast development cycles, managed object-oriented programming languages
(such as Java) are now preferred languages to implement most Big Data
platforms. With the increasing importance of Big Data, we identify two
main requirements that are common to most platforms running on any
tier of modern cloud computing platforms: i) the ability to tolerate
faults and to adapt to the number of nodes to satisfy new workload
requirements, and ii) the ability to scale with the amount of local
resources. In this talk, we address two solutions to deal with the
above requirements: i) JLM, live migration of running Java
applications, and ii) NG2C, an N-generational Garbage Collection (GC)
algorithm. Both solutions improve Big Data platforms performance by
decreasing the number of objects to copy between physical nodes (for
migration) and heap generations (for GC). With JLM and NG2C, both
latency and throughput is improved for Big Data applications when a
migration or a GC takes place, thus increasing applications performance.

Call for papers

The Internet of Things (IoT) is creating new services and applications across various domains, including smart grids, intelligent transportation, healthcare, smart homes, and energy management. As a consequence, a complex ecosystem of interconnected applications, services, as well as physical and virtual devices emerges. In this ecosystem, enabled by corresponding middleware, devices share contextual data or receive control commands; services consume, process, and/or provide data; and applications leverage services and devices to fulfill users’ needs. This workshop focuses on two fundamental components in such ecosystems: the middleware that enables composition of applications, services, and devices; and the applications built on top of such middleware. Central topics of interest include the architecture of these components, how they process data, how they communicate with one another, and the process of how they are designed, implemented, and operated.

Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Abstractions and API composition for IoT applications

Design and specify views, abstractions and APIs for IoT applications, sensors and devices

System-wide quality concerns such as performance, availability, and fault-tolerance

Submissions

M4IoT 2017 seeks two kinds of paper submissions:

6-page research papers. They should clearly demonstrate how a concrete research challenge is solved in a novel way.

4-page experience reports. They should report on practical experiences as well as clearly identify concrete research challenges that were encountered.

Please indicate the respective paper type on the title page of your submission.

Papers should describe original work (not submitted or published elsewhere) and be not more than six pages in length, including the abstract, all figures, tables, and references.

All papers should follow ACM formatting instructions, specifically the ACM SIG Proceedings Standard Style. The author kit containing the templates for the required style can be found here.

Along with the paper, you are encouraged to submit additional material (e.g., a link to a YouTube video) on a separate page which will not be published as part of the proceedings. We will later add the link to the submission site.